


The Mansion on the Hill

by aph_polonya



Series: aphfallfandomweek2018 [5]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Child Abuse (mentioned), Child neglect (mentioned), Gen, Ghosts, Haunted Houses, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Murder (mentioned), Paranormal, vengeful spirit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-29 12:09:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16263923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aph_polonya/pseuds/aph_polonya
Summary: Strange things start to happen in Toris' new home





	The Mansion on the Hill

**Author's Note:**

> Written for aphfallfandomweek2018 day 5: spooky

**The Mansion on the Hill**

The door opened with a crack. Light flooded the dark hall, illuminating the cobwebs in the corners of the old entry hall. Toris stood in the doorway and could do nothing but stare. _So this is my new home,_ he thought. The house, no, mansion, was much bigger (and also much older) than it had appeared in the advertisement. It was huge, magnificent, colossal…and much work, that much Toris could tell. It probably hadn’t been cleaned in ages. Dust had collected everywhere, so much that there were entire layers of it on the furniture. He set his suitcase down with a sigh. _Guess I’ll have to get to work then._

He was cleaning the living room when it happened the first time. The door that had been standing wide open suddenly began creaking and slowly fell shut. Toris, who was dusting off the coffee table, tensed and turned around, but nothing was to be seen. He furrowed his brows.   _Probably just the wind_ , he thought, but couldn’t shake the feeling that it definitely _hadn’t been_ the wind.

The following night, he couldn’t sleep. It was strangely cold, colder than it should be in October and he swore he could see moving silhouettes and shadows in the darkness of his bedroom. He felt restless and uneasy and extremely tense. _It’s fine_ , he kept telling himself. _Everything’s fine._                                                                                                                                                                   It was around midnight when he heard the strange noise. A scratching sound right at the door, from the top to the bottom. Again and again and again. Toris held his breath and shivered. _Please stop,_ he begged silently. _Whatever this is, please go away. Please._ After a while, the scratching subsided. Toris slowly felt himself relax again until a loud knock at the door startled him. It knocked once, twice, three times, until it became silent again for the rest of the night. Toris listened carefully for any other unusual sounds, but none came.  _I’m going crazy_ , he decided. _This has to be it. I’m slowly but surely going insane. There’s no other option._ Toris decided to see a doctor the next day.

As Toris walked out of the door the next morning, he was greeted by thick, hazy fog. He tried to make his way towards his car but soon decided that it was impossible to drive during this weather. He could barely see anything that lay ahead and thus chose to postpone the doctor’s appointment. He walked back to the door and already stood in the doorway when he felt the sudden urge to turn around. He did so, but couldn’t depict anything in the dark grey around him. As he turned back, he suddenly noticed a shadow at the edge of his vision. His heart beating rapidly, he slowly spun around again and found himself facing a dark figure standing in the fog. It stood still at a distance. Toris stared at it, until it suddenly raised his arm as if to wave him. This was too much. Toris bolted into the safety of the house, locking the door diligently behind him. _I **really** need to see a doctor._

The doctor’s appointment hadn’t been useful at all. The doctor hadn’t seen anything wrong with Toris’ health. “Everything seems fine”, he had said. “Maybe it’s just the stress. Go home and try to sleep. Everything is going to look much better tomorrow.” So Toris did just that. At first he actually slept well, until he was woken up by a loud bang. It sounded as if it had come from the basement. Still slightly tired and sleepy, he got up to investigate what had caused the strange sound. He made his way downstairs, but found nothing unusual. Everything stood in the right place. He was already turning around, ready to go back to sleep, when he saw a box next to one of the cupboards that looked as if it had fallen down. It was a small, old metal box that had definitely seen better days. _Strange. How come I’ve never seen it before even though I just recently cleaned the basement?_ Toris gingerly picked it up, as if it could explode any second. Next to it lay a small key. Toris placed the box in front of him and opened it with shaking hands. But there wasn’t anything even remotely dangerous in it. Instead, he was presented with old sheets of paper. He picked up the first one. A death certificate. _Ivan Braginsky,_ it said. _Date of birth: December 30, 1880. Date of death: October 11, 1904. Cause of death_ He stopped reading and furrowed his brow in confusion. The official document said _self-inflicted gunshot wound_ , but it was crossed out. Under it, the word _starvation_ was written in big uppercase letters. Toris stared at the document. It was old, and definitely seemed authentic, but the handwritten part had been written with a modern gel pen. Toris was confused, but shrugged it off and kept looking through the box. There were also a few pictures. One showed four people, a middle-aged man and a middle-aged woman, together with two young women. Both were probably in their twenties, with beautiful dresses. They stood in front of the mansion that Toris owned now. _Previous owners?_ He turned the photo around, hoping to find anything about them. _The Braginsky family._ _Viktor and Anastasia, together with Yekaterina and Natalya, July 1904._ A family portrait. Toris took the death certificate again. _Ivan Braginsky. But if he died in October, and the photo was taken in July, why isn’t he on it?_ He took the next photo. This one just showed the parents. Toris held it closer to the light to see it better and almost dropped it in surprise. In the same big handwriting as on the certificate, with the same pen, the word MURDERERS was written on it. Now Toris was starting to become curious. _What happened to Ivan Braginsky? And what’s with the parents? I need to find out._

Toris looked it up in the library. He read dozens of old newspapers, searching them for information on the Braginsky family, but ultimately found nothing. He was ready to give up. He was tired, he had a headache and his research was completely pointless. Why was he wasting his time like this? _This is the last one_ , he told himself as he picked up a newspaper from December 1904. He opened it and, to his luck, finally found what he had been looking for the whole day. _Family of four killed tragically. Culprit unknown_ , the headline said. On top of it was the same photo of the Braginskys Toris had seen the day before. Intrigued, he began to read. Apparently, the parents and the two daughters had been brutally murdered in their home. The police had been clueless, because the doors had been locked from the inside and there had been no way for anybody to enter the mansion. However, still not a single word about Ivan.

“Can I help you with anything? I see, you seem to be interested in the town’s history. I’ve lived here all my life, maybe I can help.” Toris was startled by the voice that all of a sudden addressed him. He put the newspaper down and found himself face to face with an old man. Toris had seen him before-he worked at the library. He was old, and while probably not old enough to remember the incident with the Braginskys, Toris still decided to ask. “Umm, yes. Do you… do you know anything about the old mansion outside of town? Especially something about the Braginskys?” The man’s expression darkened. “Ah, yes. A tragic story. Truly tragic. I don’t remember it myself, but I’ve heard stories about it. The entire family murdered. The police never found the culprit. Tragic, very tragic.” He sighed sadly, as if he had been there and remembered it. “Did they have a son? Ivan?”, Toris asked, full of anticipation. “Oh, the son. Yes, that was also quite tragic.” Toris noticed that “tragic” seemed to be the man’s favorite word, but he stayed still and continued listening. “He was in a boarding school far away. Apparently he committed suicide there. It only happened two months before the deaths of the rest of his family. Tragic, tragic.” “Is it…is it possible that it happened differently? That maybe, he didn’t die like that?” The man looked at Toris in confusion. “I don’t know. This is what the parents said and how the people told it. All I know is that this mansion is a dangerous place. The townspeople say it is haunted.” He whispered the last part. “Thank you, you’ve helped me a lot.” Toris got up. This was it, the missing puzzle piece! Maybe the family had lied about Ivan’s death! And now somebody, whoever it was, was trying to bring out the truth! “You’re welcome.” But Toris barely heard him. He was already rushing back home, trying to piece it all together.

This night, he couldn’t sleep again. He was wide awake and his thoughts were racing. _I need to find out what really happened. Whatever it is, it has something to do with Ivan, I just know it. Maybe the strange events in the house are somehow connected to all of this as well. Tomorrow I’m going to look into it some more. But now I really need to sleep._ However, sleeping was currently impossible. _I’m going back to the basement,_ he decided. _Maybe I can find some more information on Ivan. If I can’t sleep, the least I can do is be productive._ He got out of bed and made his way down to the basement. He opened the heavy door, switched on the light…and suddenly stood face to face with a young man. The man was maybe in his mid-twenties. He was extremely pale, so pale that his skin was white, and had light blonde hair. His tall and bulky frame strongly clashed with the friendly, almost childlike smile on his face. Toris just stared at him. “Hello!”, the man exclaimed, his smile widening. “Uh, um, hi”, Toris replied, still trying to wrap his mind around the unexpected guest. “How…how did you get in here?”, he asked, wondering whether he had forgotten to lock the door properly. The man looked confused now. “I’ve always been here.” “But you need to have gotten inside. I’m sure I locked the door, and all of the windows are shut too.” The man furrowed his brows. “But I live here”, he said. “And I haven’t left the house.” Toris was absolutely bewildered now, and considered his options. He could call the police. But he didn’t have his phone with him, and the man didn’t really seem dangerous. In fact, he was already smiling again. “You’re Toris, right? I’m so happy that you moved here! It’s lonely here, and that makes me sad, but now you’re here to keep me company, right?” “Uhh…” The man giggled. “I’m Ivan by the way!” Ivan. Ivan Braginsky? But that couldn’t be, right? He had been dead for more than a century! “Are you…are you Ivan Braginsky?” Ivan looked even more pleased now. “Yes, that’s me! So you managed to piece the hints I gave you together!” “The hints?” “The box” “That was you?” “Yes! I’ve been trying to contact you since you moved in, but you always ignored me.” He looked dejected at that. “But now you don’t anymore!” His expression turned to happy again. “What? Sorry, I don’t…Wait, _you_ were the figure in the fog?” “Yes! And the knocking and the scratching and the closing door. That was all me!” He looked proud of himself, as if he had just accomplished something great and world-changing. _So that is the explanation for the weird events._ But it still didn’t answer all of Toris’ questions. “May I ask you something?” Ivan beamed, obviously more than excited that someone showed interest in him and nodded enthusiastically. “Are you a ghost? I mean, you _are_ dead, right?” At the mention of his death Ivan’s expression suddenly darkened. “Yes”, he simply replied. All signs of happiness were wiped away from his expression. For a second, Toris wondered whether he should really ask the next question. But he was _so close_ to finally solving the mystery, and who could be a better source of information than Ivan himself? “Ivan? How did you die? What happened back then?” Ivan’s expression turned even angrier, his eyes glistening. At first, Toris thought he would attack him, but Ivan controlled himself and relaxed a little. “I never had friends, you know?”, he began. Toris wanted to ask what this had to do with his question, but he kept quiet. “The other children never wanted to play with me. They were scared of me. Everybody was. Even my sisters. They just teased me, always. They said that something was wrong with me. That I was an abomination.” “Who said that?” “My parents. The doctors. Everyboy. They said I was insane. And dangerous. So my parents kept me inside.” “You mean they locked you up?” “Yes.” He gesticulated around the room. “In here. Ever since I was a child. They didn’t want anybody to know what was wrong with me. So they told everybody that they had sent me to a boarding school to explain my absence. I lived here. Never had anybody visit me. Never was allowed outside. My sisters came sometimes to play with me. But they also left quickly. I could tell that they feared me. Everybody hated me.” He just looked sad now, and Toris had the urge to console him, but he didn’t know what to do. _How terrible! Imagine being locked up in here all your life!_ “I lived in here for almost sixteen years.” “What…what happened in 1904? How did you die?” “They didn’t feed me sometimes. I don’t know why. I think it was a punishment. Just because I existed. Because I was crazy. Because I wasn’t like the other children. At least that’s what they said. They didn’t give me food, and I died.” Toris just stared at him. Ivan was looking angry again. “But…that’s horrible! How…why…how could someone do something like this?” But Ivan didn’t seem to hear him. He was completely lost in his memories. “But they paid for it. They all did. I made them regret it.” “But how…Oh my god. Did you…did you kill them? Did you murder your family?” Ivan nodded, looking satisfied and quite pleased with himself. He started to giggle again. “It was funny. You should have seen their faces. Hilarious! How they were begging and screaming. Never had so much fun before! Oh, I’ll never forget their looks!” He kept giggling maniacally. Toris gulped and slowly started to back away from Ivan. Ivan’s eyes were gleaming dangerously. “But it was lonely. Nobody ever came here. I think they were still scared of me. But now you’re here, and we can be friends!” “I…I…” Toris desperately searched for something to say that wouldn’t anger the ghost. Ivan seemed to notice his hesitancy. “Don’t you want to be friends with me?”, he asked, his voice dangerously low as he walked towards Toris. Toris tried not to panic. “No…that’s not it, I just…uh…” Ivan stared at him menacingly. “Are you scared of me?” “What? No!” Toris laughed nervously. “Not at all, uh, I just…” “You don’t like me. You’re like the rest. You think I’m insane too.” “No!” “Yes. You’re just going to leave like everyone else!” He started to close the space between them, slowly coming closer while Toris backed further away until he hit the wall. Ivan was still smiling, but his eyes were cold. “But I’m going to make you stay. You’re not going to leave like the others. You’re going to stay with me forever, so that I’ll never be lonely again!” Toris looked over to his side, his heart beating frantically in his chest. There was the door. Maybe, if he was fast enough, he could reach it. But then again, what use was that? What if Ivan could go through walls? No, he _had_ to try it. The door was is only chance. However, Ivan had noticed his look. With a satisfied, smug smile, he flicked his hand, and the door swung shut with a bang. Toris looked back towards Ivan, whose smile widened even more as he kept coming closer and closer until he stood right in front of him. Toris was trapped.


End file.
